Ultima Online. They also had npcs which you could hire but for the purpose of selling your goods. You placed them around your house and you could have as many as you could afford. The system worked simply because you clicked and the goods displayed. It was very easy to browse. It made buying and selling very immersive and people put up shopping malls, which was kinda awesome.

Everquest...didn't have such a thing when the game launched but they had a system kinda like SE's but it was just a toon converted to a market. They all stood in a bazaar which was somewhat similar to a market ward. Big difference though, in that it was searchable (through a npc) and when the item you wanted was located there was a trail to guide you to it.

Star Wars Galaxies. Also had stores in player housing, similar to Ultima's (same lead dev) but it also had a auction house. Players prefered the auction house, but the vendors in player housing was immersive.

Subsequent games had auction houses. Best ever in my opinion is EvE online. You had to buy and could sell from your home (station) as it were, but you could see what was available elesewhere. you could even buy it remotely but still had to travel to get it.

Yes, a retainer system could be better for immersion, but history has shown that auction houses are the prefered way to go.

Innovation is taking an existing idea and improving upon it, so SE is trying to innovate with market wards, but they are definately not improving on it.

Invention is something totally new.

Just wanted to clarify a few things for the fanboys who think retainers are a new idea.

I feel like in this game, if I really want to have a chance of competing in this economy, I have no choice but to purchase retainers. I also feel like the only reason they aren't implementing an AH, is because then they won't be able to charge people for retainers.

I feel like in this game, if I really want to have a chance of competing in this economy, I have no choice but to purchase retainers. I also feel like the only reason they aren't implementing an AH, is because then they won't be able to charge people for retainers.

Hehe, yes because if it has been done before it certainly doesn't belong in FFXIV. Right?

You are actually proving the point that FFXIV is full of innovation while trying to prove that it's copying from others. Or something. I'm not sure what your point is. I can say that FFXIV beats the pants off Everquest and Ultima Online.

Same kind of deal was also in Phantasy Star Universe, excepting the awesomely customizable search feature. You could easily set it to show a list of everything you character could equip in a given spot, sorted by cost (cheapest or most expensive first). If this is soon implemented and then shows the "!" icon above the applicable retainer, it's going to be fairly cool.

What's your purpose in posting this again?

NoOneHereAlive wrote:

Just wanted to clarify a few things for the fanboys who think retainers are a new idea.

Oh yeah, thanks. We wouldn't want people thinking SE came up with something new on their own.

A lot of Korean MMOs have no subscription fee, but once they suck you in they start nickle and diming you with their cash shop. You don't have to buy items from the shop, in the same way that you don't have to have local anesthesia to get a tooth filled.

In Anarchy Online, there is vendor machine (retainer), there is Global Search but there is no AH. And vendor machines are placed in player cities, which can be at the farthest corner of the planet, luckily there are variety of transportation methods.

My question is, did the other MMOs with retainers let you search the retainers or also have an auction house?

Only one that I know of that had both was Star Wars Galaxies. SWG had searchable retainers (sort of) from the AH. EQ had the retainers searchable from a central NPC in the bazaars. With UO you had to visit their version of the retainer but since travel was fairly easy it wasn't too inconvenient. And FFXI which had both.

The Auction House superceded retainers even though retainers had some community/social/immersive benefits because the Auction Houses were efficient and the vast majority of players preferred Auction houses.

Um, no. FFXIV is better than EQ, but not by much. What makes that kind of sad is that EQ is 11 years old.

Ha. Go do a corpse run, see you in a week or so.

Yes, dying sucked in that game, but travelling within dangerous territory caused real fear, hehe. It's not like I enjoyed the corpse runs or losing a whole day's worth of xp, but it's a tradeoff - games have gotten so casual with death penalties that are minor or non-existent that it takes a lot of the thrills away.

Anybody who tiptoed through Kithicor Forest at night as a newbie back in the day knows what I'm talking about!

Ultima Online. They also had npcs which you could hire but for the purpose of selling your goods. You placed them around your house and you could have as many as you could afford. The system worked simply because you clicked and the goods displayed. It was very easy to browse. It made buying and selling very immersive and people put up shopping malls, which was kinda awesome.

Not just kinda awesome; totally awesome. Since they were located inside player housing and stayed in place even through maintenance, many shops with dedicated supplier/sellers made names for themselves.

There was a shop on my server that I always visited for new weapons. The prices were usually fair and the vendor was restocked regularly. I know I wasn't the only one that visited that shop often either. Players with highly decorated houses, clever crafter names (*created by HandofGod/TommyHilfiger), or the biggest mall outlets often got the best business.

The system can be awesome! It just sucks in FFXIV because it lacks organization. I understand that SE likes the idea of it all being in one place (not cluttering the world like they did in UO for example); however, the fact that people just throw them down wherever inside the wards without much care and they disappear during maintenance makes it less awesome. Half of it is flawed design, half of it is lack of player ingenuity. Imagine if players tried to place their retainers inside the zones in organized lines along the sides and ends of the aisles, leaving the aisles clean and free to walk and systematically shop retainers down a line. That was UO, and it was great.

You are actually proving the point that FFXIV is full of innovation while trying to prove that it's copying from others. Or something. I'm not sure what your point is. I can say that FFXIV beats the pants off Everquest and Ultima Online.

In Ultima Online's current state, yes. But not in pre-Trammel UO.

The main reasons I'm not paying much attention to the reviews FFXIV has been getting is because when Ultima Online came out, it received scores around the same range because it too was in a bit of a mess at launch. To compare to Gamespot's 4.0/10 rating of FFXIV, they gave UO a 4.9/10.

Ultima Online went on to prove the potential of the genre, and become an absolutely incredible game at it's peak. It offered an experience that has yet to be matched, and likely will not be given the direction of where MMO's are going. That the MMO genre is as popular as it is today is directly due to Ultima Online. They paved the way.

As for FFXIV being full of innovations, I don't see it being 'full of innovations' myself. I'm having fun playing it, but I'm not seeing anything wildly innovative. The Armoury system is something new-ish, but it isn't completely without precedent. And the crafting system is very similar to what EQ2 had when it launched 6 years ago. EQ2's was actually a bit more involved, since you weren't restricted to specific items in the recipes. For example, if a recipe called for water, it didn't have to be "Distilled Water" only. You could use various sources of water. Even monster saliva. Each different type had it's own hidden stat, so some were better than others.